Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Many years ago, when Wonker was a mere lad, he recalls an amusing incident that happened one morning at the family breakfast table. As always, back in those thrilling retro yesterdays of the 1950s, Wonker's mom had various cereal boxes on the table (mostly of the sugar-rush variety like the ever popular Sugar-Frosted Flakes and Kix). And the three of us—Wonk and his two sisters—were pouring milk on this stuff and shoveling it into our gullets as fast as we could. Somehow, no one quite remembers how, Mom made a remark in passing, perhaps echoing a Carnation commercial, that the milk came from contented cows. Wide-eyed with amazement, Wonk's 6-year-old youngest sister nearly dropped her spoon in wonder, exclaiming in a high-pitched voice, "Does milk come from cows????"

Well, you had to be there, but to this day, many moons later, mere mention of this incident causes great mirth among Wonker and the Wonkettes (are we violating anyone's copyright here?) It was simply hilarious to Wonk and sister #1 that sister #2 should be so dumb that she had no clue as to milk's secret origins.

But the point of this seemingly pointless story is to serve as a lead-in for this one which arrives via TigerHawk:

Pamela Anderson has finally realized that UGGs sheepskin boots are made of... sheep! From her "diary" entry of February 21, 2007 (photo at right for purely illustrative purposes):

I'm getting rid of our Uggs - I feel so guilty for that craze being started around Baywatch days - I used to wear them with my red swim suit to keep warm - never realizing that they were SKIN! I thought they were shaved kindly? People like to tell me all the time that I started that trend - yikes! Well lets start a new one - do NOT buy Uggs! Buy Stella McCartney or juicy boots - I'm looking for alternatives myself for my boys and the men in my life! I'm designing some right now for my family and will try and have some available on my website soon.

It's what I grab by my door in the mornings to bring my kids to school or walk my dog on the beach at 6am or anything early - I've definitely over used them - and that's it!!!!

Again, let's go over this. Sister #2 was flabbergasted to discover that milk actually came from cows. But she was 6. Pamela Anderson, who must be nearing 40, had no clue that shearling sheepskin is just that: the skin of an actual sheep that retains its wool. Which, of course, is why it's called "sheepskin," right?

With the latest tiresome Oscar gasbag fest now blessedly a thing of the past, we need to remind ourselves that it's often been the likes of Pamela Anderson, clearly a member of Hollywood's intellectual class, who have been hectoring and lecturing us ad nauseam lately on topics as diverse as freedom of speech, the evil of our Global War on Terrorism, and, of course, America's Satanic central role in the destruction of our precious planet via "global warming," particularly that personally caused by George W. Bush and anyone who voted for him.

Pam Anderson, in short, except for her surgically-enhanced silhouette, is typical of the "intelligentsia" in the entertainment world that the MSM has anointed as our new scholarly class. They do bring a certain glamor to the table, I'll admit, when compared to genuine scholars and policy wonks. But the problem is that the depth and breadth of knowledge emanating from these giants, as illustrated in this example, is somewhat less impressive than that of a naive and gullible 6-year old from flyover country many years ago. Why these self-appointed scholars are given such mighty press coverage and praised to the skies for their obvious ignorance about everything except serial monogamy once again illustrates the triumph of, er, form over substance when it comes to the American left. In La-La land, all you have to do is proclaim your ignorance loud and proud and you're an instant sage, like, well, the latest addition to Tinseltown's Groupthink Tank: His Royal Smugness, the Goracle himself, the latest proud holder of the Oscar granted annually to the "Most Polished Piece of Socialist, anti-U.S. Propaganda Disguised As a Documentary."

BTW, speaking of form, TigerHawk's entry is somewhat more attractive than ours as it features a mini-photo of Professor Anderson for the edification and amusement of his readers. If you must, you may link to his entry here.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

One of the highlights of Wonker's peripatetic excuse for a career was his stint as a stockbroker, circa 1978-1984. It was a tough market to operate in, as nearly this entire period was drowned by the massive bear market caused by the idiotic policies of America's worst President ever, anti-Semite-in-Chief James Earl Carter. Ah, those were the days...16% mortgages, Bunky and Billy Hunt getting wiped out of their near corner of silver bullion on Silver Thursday (March 27, 1980)...

It took then-Fed Chair Paul Volcker and President Ronald Reagan years to clean up the mess and bring us out of "stagflation" and into some measure of prosperity.

Even so, life ain't perfect on Wall Street as we learned during the Black Monday Crash of 1987 the Tech Panic of 2000 (aka the "dot.bomb") which inaugurated the nasty but shallow Clinton (not Bush) Recession of 2000-2001 which was exacerbated by 9/11.

Since September of 2001, however, after going to sleep for awhile, the market and the economy have come roaring back under Bush II's economic policies. But the inability of the past two administrations to teach the Chinese Commies some of the saner elements of capitalism came to a head today, compounded by a rapidly deflating subprime lending environment and some blithering idiocy on the New York Stock Exchange.

Yep, the market waterfalled violently this afternoon, sending Wall Street traders into the alleys, bleeding from the eyeballs at what seemed like an instantaneous drop in mid-afternoon of 200 points. In a matter of seconds, the Dow Jones industrials, already pummelled by the Chinese decision to get nasty on credit and speculation without warning anybody (including their own people), seemed to be swan-diving back to 1929, albeit from a much higher peak.

Turns out that the fabled "circuit breakers" and maybe a few other things, conspired to cause massive miscalculation of the averages for much of the day today.

It will be interesting to see how the chief American villain, the NYSE, explains its way out of this one, or how the small investors who got hosed by a roundhouse punch they never saw coming will react tomorrow morning.

Jim Cramer, the wild man of Wall Street, but actually quite a savvy trader as far as this ex-pro is concerned, nailed the problem on the exchange this afternoon:

You didn't even have time to panic.

The system failed us, breaking down too fast for you to panic.

We totally collapsed between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. ET, dropping 200 points. All the circuit breakers and all of the rules that were put into place years ago after 1987 just utterly failed.

Then we had the backdraft, and it happened so fast we don't yet know how it went wrong. But it did, with the sellers' heavy tinder. Maybe that exacerbated the hard-selling ETFs. Whatever it was, the wick caught and then flared -- when we thought we were fireproof.

The buyers, and there are plenty of them, simply couldn't get to the floor fast enough to buy and put out some of that selling.

There you have it. Amateur hour with the Chi-coms, who clearly didn't mean to send their top trading partner into a recessionary mood (even if they don't actually like us much), but did their best to accomplish just that with their inept and almost comically thuggish move against their own excess after doing nothing seemingly forever. Which, combined with cranky NYSE software and ruthless and stupid hedge funds cranking computerized sell orders until there was no inventory left to sell, gave Wall Street a bigger case of the willies than bin Laden's goons could generate in a decade of terrorism. The market has been a bit off the wall lately, sinking on low volume, always a bad sign of impending indigestion. But today's action was like a dose of Metamucil gone wild.

Cramer laments the passing of the perfectly useful "trading halts" that used to protect investors from this kind of craziness back in Wonker's days of manning the phones to tout the analysts' latest hot picks:

In the old days, when things were sane, we would have had order imbalances, a stoppage of trading. We didn't get that today. We got nothing. We got nothing but a gap, and it reminded us of the old days, when we used to have to have bids way underneath. In other words, be ready to buy because of the whims of sellers.

But there's another difference now. You can force the market down. The old rules put into place in the 1930s, the ones that were meant to stop motivated sellers from breaking the market are all gone now, taken out by a complacent Securities and Exchange Commission that never dreamed of what could happen today.

Gradually, since the days of Carter, actually, not Reagan as everyone thinks, the financial markets have been gradually been de-regulated to the point that a lot of the good stuff the Feds put in place to protect people since 1929 has been eliminated.

Wonk still loves to cop a good trade, although he nearly had a coronary today and took a pretty significant bath by the close. But Wonk can take it, albeit not without uttering some colorful metaphors. What is far, far more worrisome, however, is the average American's near-blissful ignorance of fairly recent history. We're supposedly much-improved in the arena of sophisticated financial controls today. But with predatory lenders hawking (until recently) subprime products that virtually begged for marginal lenders to be foreclosed, thus weakening the lending sector; and with massively scaled computerized trading programs subject to selling (or buying) panics triggered by a (very large) Third World country's lack of marketplace grace and finesse, you get once again a sobering reminder of just how delicate the structure of Western civilization has become.

Malachi Martin spent the better part of twenty years decrying the overwhelming and destructive onslaught of the Left on the Catholic Church, not only in Latin America, but in the United States and Europe. In his last published novel, Windswept House, 1998, his not-very-subtle roman a clef about the troubles besetting John Paul II, troubles not from the East but from the West, the attitude depicted in the Vatican was one of virtual surrender. The future would be one where the Pope was a solitary witness against the secular tide, a Pilgrim hoping to lead some of the people out of the morass. But Malachi Martin wasn't the Pope. And, Papa Karol, through suppression of liberation theology, and the appointment of conservative Cardinals and Bishops, did not surrender. It's having an effect. Read the rest at Front Page. Religious faith matters. Why do you think the Reds tried so hard for fifty years to undercut the Church?

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Here's a link to an extensive followup, via Michelle Malkin, relating to our earlier commentary in which we describe a physical attack on young college Republicans by a Moonbat stalker with a penchant for foul language and a passion for violence. Malkin's page has pix of the perp, Andrew Stone, and plenty of shots of his vile facebook entries, along with a pretty typical email in which he provides the following genteel invitation to another college Repub:

Andrew has invited you to join the Facebook group "Republicans are Cowards".

Andrew says, "Hey cunt-boy. I hope to meet you in real life sometime."

Such guttersnipe language, part and parcel of the Kos Kids, is apparently the current stock in trade of an increasingly vocal and violent cadre of young Marxist brownshirts who plan to bring democracy to an end sooner than we thought. Who's paying these out-of-control swine? George Soros (who's provided support to Kos)? Kim Jong-Il?

Stone's victims put a restraining order on him and are pressing charges, which is great. But they and others are already intimidated, which was Stone's objective, as well as the objective of other left wing socialist criminals who slash Republican tires and "key" Republican cars.

So much for free expression.

Read our entry, linked above, for the beginning of this story, and Malkin's entry for the gory details straight from the pen of one of the victims. (BTW, HazZzMat takes first credit for citing, two days ago, the Fredericksburg newspaper's probable papering over of Stone's political beliefs, BTW, a line now cited by Michelle.)

Apropos of our mentioning Ward Churchill in yesterday's post—which concerned a leftist academic's call for the University of Tennessee to fire law prof (and Instapundit) Glenn Reynolds for proposing a provocative way to wind down the Iraq war effort—we alluded to the still grinding process being conducted by a reluctant University of Colorado to remove the tenured-in and multi-level academic fraud Ward Churchill from his post.

Leftist academics similar to flamer Paul Campos—who was quick to urge the essentially libertarian Reynolds' banishment to the rice paddies—have been manning the barricades to protect the fanatically Stalinist Churchill who lied and plagiarized his way to tenure. The latest from Judith Weiss' Kesher Talk:

Remember faux-Indian"Ethnic Studies" professorWard"little Eichmanns"Churchill? His case continues to inch through the bureaucracy of the University of Colorado....Churchill's advocates are making a last-ditch effort to mobilize supporters in academia, via an Open Letter calling on the U of Colorado to reverse its decision. The signatories include the usual suspects Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, also controversial academics Rashid Khalidi and Juan Cole. Both Khalidi and Cole have recently had to defend their academic credentials in pursuit of professional advancement, and their participation in Churchill's defense gives credence to their detractors. (In a truly moronic convergence of nutty professors, Deborah Frisch (fired from U of Arizona for stalking a blogger and threatening his child) defended Churchill at CounterPunch in 2005.)

We'd observe that loons of a feather flock together, but then we'd probably irritate our friends in Canada, which we're not eager to do with the Conservatives back in power.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

...one should think that a law professor is able to choose his words precisely, so by employing loaded terms like “fascist” and “extremist,” Campos, we must conclude, is using them intentionally, meaning he is here operating less as a law professor than as an overzealous prosecutor trying to set a pitch for his “arguments,” such as they are.

(Comment: That's a charitable interpretation, for sure! )

And they aren’t much—which explains why Campos relies so heavily on crass hyperbole and argument by insinuation and emotional appeal to craft his calculated outrage. In fact, the entire piece is nothing but bully and bluster meant to shame his opponent and taint him, in the minds of readers, with the associated deeds of those who we have historically identified as either “fascists” or “extremists.” It is, if you will, practically Nifongesque.

Precisely. As we've indicated many times in this blog, the whole idea is to demonize the opponent via baseless slander and smears in order to avoid dealing with the argument at hand by turning it into a discussion of your opponent's character. The left never debates, only denounces. It's a dialectical tool having nothing to do with logic or legality, since leftists don't believe in either. Only the party line. (BTW, the final reference is to the disgracefully ambitious Durham County D.A. and Chief Persecutor Paul Nifong, the Duke lacrosse team's now former High Inquisitor.)

But we digress. Wise Protein finds that this kind of garbage dumping

...is, after all, a rather standard tactic now for the “progressive” left’s more vocal advocates—but it is ironic, nevertheless, given that it is people like Campos who, in perfectly distilled moments of clinical-grade projection, are literally working to enact a form of intellectual fascism, even as they see all around them phantasmagorical attempts by “extremists” like Glenn Reynolds (!) to oppress them.

Which, unfortunately, is what happens once you begin locating in positions that differ from yours elements of “hate speech” in need of “policing”—or, in this case, even the need for some sort of professional intervention.

Indeed. BTW, for the umpteenth time, "progressive" is the sanitized, MSM way to describe Marxists and/or socialists so they don't have to labor under either of these terminological taints. Protein (aka Jeff Goldstein) recognizes this by encasing the term in well-deserved scare quotes.

In this as well as other incidents, the lefties always emerge as the fascists and Stalinists they are, although the MSM refuse to report it that way. Lefties have no logical answers for their critics who are invariably correct 100% of the time since they are employing logic over party cant and pointless dialectical wrestling matches meant only to confuse and distract the public.

Marxists and left-wingers just love to heap criticism, opprobrium, and God knows what else upon folks they view as dwelling on the right side of the political aisle. Tools of choice are the smear, the slander, and if all else fails, the kind of concerted, almost choral denunciation one used to get in Uncle Joe Stalin's Soviet Union for simply daring to exist. Further, today's "progressive" scoundrels know that the MSM will help them pile on and that there will be no consequences for their thuggish behavior. (Indeed, it is often rewarded with prizes and honoraria.) Criticize them, however, and you'll live to rue the day you ever opened your mouth to proclaim the truth.

Of course, an individual who still possesses the faculty of reason can simply choose to keep silent and avoid this kind of character assassination. After all, such attacks can and often do lead to professional oblivion, particularly in academia. But just try to speak out publicly against any element of socialist dogma, actual or implied, and that Satanic chorus of "progressive" Marxists will arise to smite you down. And, for good measure, maybe even get you fired from your job.

Case in point was some political and military speculation by respected blogger and University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit. Glenn opined that maybe rather than attack an increasingly bellicose Iran, a less damaging choice might be selective assassination of the mullahs and scientists who are racing to ignite a nuclear holocaust while using their proxies to whack American soldiers:

We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and Iranian atomic scientists, supporting the simmering insurgencies within Iran, putting the mullahs' expat business interests out of business, etc. Basically, stepping on the Iranians' toes hard enough to make them reconsider their not-so-covert war against us in Iraq. And we should have been doing this since the summer 2003.

Sort of returning the favor for what these Islamofascists are doing to our GIs in Iraq, right? Hugh Hewitt (also a legal eagle) weighed in with a concurring opinion, but also warned Glenn of what would probably happen next:

Glenn will no doubt attract virtual bricks from the usual suspects, but he goes right to the heart of the problem. If we know that Iran is killing American soldiers, if we don't punish that action is some way, the killing will not only continue, it will increase.

Well, that was more than enough for left-wing law professor Paul Campos to puff up his showy feathers to denounce Reynolds (and Hewitt) in true Stalinist fashion, in the pages of the Rocky Mountain News in a hit-piece ironically titled "The Right's Ward Churchill" after the leftist "minority" imposter who got himself tenured in at Campos' school.

After he tired of his preening propaganda tirade, Campos decided to wrap things up by calling for U Tenn to fire Reynolds:

Certainly, it's worth asking Reynolds' administrative superiors at the University of Tennessee what limits, if any, the terms and conditions of Reynolds' employment put on his behavior. After all, if the American government were to follow Reynolds' advice, his employer would have an accessory to murder on its payroll.

Although there are clearly no limits on Campos' behavior, Campos picked the wrong adversary this time. Power Line (also authored by a triumvirate of attorneys) jumped all over him. But Reynolds can also take care of himself, and fired back in the same paper:

Paul Campos has beclowned himself. He did it in the usual way, by arguing loudly about things he does not understand.

Read the whole piece for Reynolds' devastating argument. (Facts trump propaganda and lies every time, although the media rarely allow that outcome in a public forum.) After demolishing Campos' fact-less rant, Reynolds concludes:

Other law professors have, of course, made similar arguments, at far greater length than my blog post. Campos, himself a law professor, could have learned these things through a simple Google search, but apparently did not.

Instead, he authored an uninformed column, and then added a thuggish suggestion that my university should discipline me for daring to utter thoughts that, in his uninformed state, he found uncongenial. After he has educated himself sufficiently to have an informed opinion on the subject, Campos might still disagree. But if he does, I promise not to try to get him fired for not sharing my opinions. Perhaps one day, he’ll learn to return the favor.

Don't count on it, Glenn. Today's Marxist left—particularly in its academic playpens where they rarely have to suffer adult supervision—pretty much observes the Seinfeld Rules of Behavior: No hugging. No learning.

The cumulative antics of anti-intellectual leftist thugs like Campos, and obvious frauds like Ward Churchill for that matter, may eventually draw the taxpayers who support their anti-American antics into at last supporting the real solution to the seditious propaganda mills that so many American institutions of higher learning have become: the abolition of tenure. If you don't learn to control your children, after all, they'll control you. It's high time for tenured radicals to be stripped of their artificial force-fields and required to undergo annual reviews and meet workplace standards just like the rest of us.

(Interesting note, BTW. Churchill is apparently still fighting his justifiable dismissal ("firing") from U. Colorado-Boulder, and has garnered Idiotarian statements of support like this one. Wonder if these same perps would support a respected, non-fraudulent academic like Reynolds? Bet Campos wouldn't.)

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

It took us awhile to reconfigure our "New Blogger" account to enable YouTube video uploads. But it was worth the hassle in order to bring you this awesome video of a speech to the House floor by Congressman Sam Johnson, a Korean War Vet and a POW in one of Uncle Ho's squalid prisoner-of-war camps for nearly 7 years.

Johnson simply and quietly explains how vocal defeatists and propagandists for the left weakened our military efforts in the 1960s, and draws the all-too-obvious (except for the MSM) analogy to our current situation where Democrats "support the troops" while working 24/7 to undermine them. We'd call this casual sedition verging on treason. The Congressman does not. But after he's done, it's tough not to draw that conclusion.

Congressman Johnson's floor oration is perhaps the most brilliant short political speech we've heard since Ronald Reagan ruled the airwaves and thus the country. It's refreshing to hear the voice, and argument, of a real patriot as opposed to the faux "patriots" that are trying to demoralize another generation of American heroes just like they did to Johnson, John McCain, and countless others.

A Fredericksburg man was arrested Saturday on charges he assaulted three strangers at their home during a dispute over politics, police said.

According to a Fredericksburg police report, the suspect went to a home in the 900 block of Marye Street about 5:30 p.m. after finding one of the resident's name[s] on a Republican Web site.

The resident and his two roommates engaged in a discussion with the suspect, though none of them had ever met or had contact with him before.

The argument got heated and the suspect learned that the young residents had not enlisted in the military and "put their all" behind the Republican-led war effort in Iraq, police spokeswoman Natatia Bledsoe said.

The suspect refused to leave the home after repeatedly being asked to do so, police said. The three roommates were hit multiple times each as they attempted to get the suspect out of the door, authorities said.

The suspect continued to be aggressive and disorderly even after a city police officer arrived, the report states.

Andrew Stone, 23, was charged with three counts of assault and battery. A magistrate released Stone on his own recognizance and he was ordered to have no further contact with the victims.

Reporter Keith Epps, who up to this point has written an exemplary newspiece, just can't resist ending the piece with this sentence, however:

It was not clear in the report what political agenda Stone was supporting.

You've got to be kidding, Keith. If it literally wasn't "clear in the report," well, then, you shoulda done some sleuthing. What kind of journalism is this? It's pretty obvious that Andy ain't a conservative, right? (On the other hand, if he HAD been a conservative, this would have been duly reported, although the label would have been "right wing extremist.")

In the last two presidential elections, most Northern Virginia Republicans of Wonker's acquaintance were careful not to affix pro-Bush bumper stickers to their automobiles. They were and are well aware that such shows of support for the good guys would earn them flat tires, "keying" of new finishes, and other types of damage as punishment for exercising their right to free speech. The criminals? A few were caught, most were not, but it's pretty clear that all were Idiotarian, Marxist-Leninist supporters of Gore or Kerry, engaged in political debate at a level that matched their adolescent intellects.

But now it appears that, in Fredericksburg, at least, you don't even need a pro-Republican bumper sticker to invite a violent attack from the nutroots in your own home. They now track you down via the web, violating your privacy as well as your sanctuary. Isn't home invasion a felony?

Then again, being a Democrat is never having to say you're sorry. We, however, are sorry that Keith Epps didn't bother to finish his story, which describes quite accurately the kind of political terror that has become a Nutroots stock-in-trade. We've often accused these people of being closet Stalinists. Now it looks like one of them, at least, has come out of the closet. Looks a lot like proof to me.

Hat tip to the invaluable Little Green Footballs which has been tireless in its efforts to dig these destructive termites out of the walls and expose them to the daylight where they can't long survive.

Monday, February 19, 2007

In the spirit of Washington's Birthday (whose idea was it to degrade this holiday to "President's Day" anyway?), we've decided to add the Pandagon blog to our thin but growing "Enemies List." We named it in honor of a similar one created by the late, lamented Trickster, who still doesn't get enough credit for seeing what the accession of George McGovernment would mean for the once-honorable Democrat Party, now being run by increasingly un-closeted Marxists.

Edwards, with a true executive decisiveness harkening back to those thrilling days of yesteryear— when when heroic George McGovern supported his running mate Tom Eagleton 1000% before dumping him from the ticket—supported Amanda's freedom to blog by, well, at least 100%. And then dumped her shortly thereafter via the usual "self-resignation" route so popular in DC to cover up a political firing. Say, what is it about these Democrats anyway? Always being "for" something or someone before they're "against" it or them? Evidence, perhaps, of a party that has no principles at all, save a naked lust for power?

Anyhow, given Amanda's fondness for foul language, gratuitous insults, vile invective, and nonstop, unfounded slandering—most, if not all learned from the Marx-Gramsci tactical playbook—we've decided to honor her and her pals by placing her on our Enemies List. Clearly, she'll be in good company with other hatemeisters of the left on our list, particularly the Daily Kos. Welcome, Amanda!

**(The existence of the "patriarchy," BTW, has always been a mystery to Wonker. Many years ago and in a galaxy far, far away called "America in the 1970s," Wonk was blackballed by dozens of colleges when he sought tenure-track positions held open for doctrinaire gender feminists and other leftist species by means of hiring quotas. And who, of course, were not "privileged" like the unemployed Wonker. Some "patriarchy.")

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Maryville Univ. in St. Louis area cancelling screening of Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ because of a snowstorm...

And here in the Capital of the Free World, Wonker had to chip the frozen front wheels of Mrs. Wonker's patriotic Saturn Ion out of an iceberg this morning before she could skate, er, drive to work. Now that was inconvenient.

Back in our undergrad days, Wonk and his pals used to dispense a monthly Glass Navel Award on our campus radio station. The Award would be given to the individual, corporation, or entity that had its head (or collective head) so far up its nether orifice that doctors would need to insert a glass naval to enable the organism to view the path ahead.

It's time to revive the tradition after a decades long hiatus.

And the winner is...not John Cougar Mellencamp, not Bruce Springsteen, not John "Let's Lose Another War" Kerry, not the Democrats, but (drum roll, please)...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- General Motors and Chrysler Group are in talks to develop a large sport utility vehicle, that would be similar to the Chevrolet Suburban, according to a report published Thursday.

Hey, let's give those dudes in upper management a big round of applause and the February HazZzMat Glass Navel Award! In addition, we eagerly await their next joint press release in which management will pat themselves on their collective back and pass around huge bonuses for once again thinking outside the box and giving the consumers exactly what they want: another monster gas guzzler that will generate more profits for OPEC. Maybe they'll even bring back Chrysler's idiotic "Dr. Z" commercial campaign to flack for this turkey.

(Of course, the only folks who'll want or be able to afford this joint "GM-C" (GM+Chrysler)fiasco will be Al Gore and the Hollywood enviro-freaks. They'll buy them so they can drive around the country in comfort, lecturing us all on how we'll just have to tighten our belts, ride bicycles, and live in environmentally-friendly tents without electricity in order to fulfill the Kyoto accords that China doesn't have to observe.)

Over at Hugh Hewitt's site, once and future Soxblogger Dean Barnett riffs on the politics of John Mellencamp, a troubador he admires as an artist. Unfortunately, that's also meant enduring Mellencamp's idiotic, adolescent politics over the years:

I WISH I COULD SAY I was surprised when I saw Mellencamp’s now-notorious interview with Charlie Rose where Mellencamp said that we shouldn’t have responded militarily to Osama bin Laden after 9/11. For good measure, he added that we shouldn’t have responded militarily to Japan after Pear Harbor, either.

Directly after, Dean has a real epiphany, one we've been trying to point out here at HazZzMat since our founding over a year ago:

This interview was typical of Mellencamp’s politics – ignorant, idiotic and childishly contrarian. Of course, there was also the irritating grace note of moral superiority. Mellencamp wants peace, everyone else wants war. Therefore, Mellencamp is the superior being, the enlightened artist.

Dean nails it right here, vividly describing what one can charitably describe as Mellencamp's political world view—which, as any sentient being should understand is less a matter of politics than it is propaganda and moral posturing. Not to mention a desire to be admired by the leftists who dominate the entertainment industry, an important point that Dean gets to rather quickly by describing the "irritating grace note of moral superiority" and the preening smugness that goes along with being a "superior being, the enlightened artist." There is, of course, no enlightenment here, only the adolescent narcissism that is today a pre-requisite for success in the entertainment business not to mention the arts and academia.

The reality, of course, is that Mellencamp is, politically speaking, not only uninformed but stupid, which I'm using here in its original descriptive sense. The kind of party-line blathering you get out of these entertainment types is the same Gramscian script everyone else in that business is repeating. There's no superiority here at all. Only a mindless conformism, masquerading as intellectual courage. Frankly, sucking up to the prevailing point of one's peer group involves cowardice rather than courage. But in the ephemeral world of rich entertainers, that's a detail they can easily overlook.

Dean contrasts Mellencamp's willingness to bloviate on a topic with which he has little acquiaintance or expertise with the knowledge of his own natural limitations:

He’s blissfully ignorant that he’s about to become the poster-child for sub-moronic entertainment-community politics.

Speaking of blissful ignorance, you have to wonder what goes through a guy like Mellencamp’s mind when he’s asked to talk politics for 30 minutes on national television. If someone asked me to spend 30 minutes on TV discussing particle physics, I would respectfully decline. I don’t know a blessed thing about particle physics, and I wouldn’t want to take the chance of being exposed for the ignoramus that I am. And yet Mellencamp, a man so ignorant that he didn’t seem entirely familiar with Pearl Harbor, willfully walked into Charlie Rose’s den. Unbelievable.

We follow Dean up to the "unbelievable." Believe it, Dean. This is precisely the problem with today's entertainers who think that their massive wealth entitles them to be listened to on topics ranging from brain surgery to international politics.

Rarely has such breathtaking ignorance been in evidence on such a massive scale. America's richest entertainers, among the wealthiest individuals on this planet, have become a significant 5th column presence in this country even as they flaunt its traditions with their penchant for serial relationships and tawdry displays of money and conspicuous consumption.

Dean eventually sidles up to a solution that was briefly employed against the Dixie Chicks (but then gradually forgotten) and should be employed against all these clowns. Cut off the feedbag:

In the future, I’m going to be a lot more reluctant to financially support artists who likely consider me a neocon warmonger. Given how annoying Mellencamp’s ubiquitous Chevy commercial is, not purchasing Mellencamp’s new album will probably be a painless first step.

That's right. It's time for this country's real working stiffs (not faux unionists like the despicable Bruce Springsteen) to stand up and be counted. Forget smarmy clowns like Mellencamp (once pretentiously billed as John "Cougar" Mellencamp) and Springsteen. Boycott 'em. Save your money and buy an inflation-indexed savings bond. At least you'll get a return on your dollar. Instead of having to wipe a foul gob of entertainment-land spit off your face.

One of the amazing facts of the weak-kneed domestic support of the Iraq war effort, not to mention the war on terror, is how few working general officers in the US military were willing to acknowledge that the major source of IEDs, training, and other military assistance for the Iraqi insurgents was Iran. The Fourth Rail's report, which should be front page news, isn't. Instead, it has to be dredged out with the assistance of Formerspook and other bloggers. One can understand why the surrender team on Capitol Hill wouldn't want to know about this, but a general officer whose career is tied up in the actions of the United States military? Generally, in corporate, institutional, or other organizational affairs, supporting evidence for action is brought forward like the soloist in a piano concerto. You wouldn't hide Peter Serkin behind the double basses. Fortunately, the story is out there. Whatever wall kept the Pentagon from reporting this truth, backed up with intensive investigation and documentation, has come down. Walls do come down, mythology to the contrary. And Fox has picked the story up. The NY Sun and The Washington Times have picked it up. That's a start. But it took four years! This is the price of a partisan press with near-monopoly control on what we find through normal channels. Given the stakes, it's too high. Maybe what's needed instead of a Net Neutrality Act is a Network and Newspaper Neutrality Act.

Czech president Vaclav Klaus: I will pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing...we know that there exists a huge correlation between the care we give to the environment on one side and the wealth and technological prowess on the other side. It's clear that the poorer the society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to Nature, and vice versa.• It's also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature - by eliminating private ownership and similar things - much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected uncomparably more than on February 8th ten years ago or fifty years ago or one hundred years ago...maybe I am just too naive and I allowed you to provoke me to give you all these answers, am I not? It is more likely that you actually believe what you say....'President of Czech Republic Calls Global Warming a Myth,' Drudge Report, 2/12/2007

President Klaus probably shouldn't expect dinner invitations on his visit to Hollywood.

Friday, February 09, 2007

We generally come up with our own commentary here at HazZzMat. But Instapundit has strung some good stuff together today, incorporating other commentary and stringing together some useful links connecting Marxism, religious fanaticism, and, of course, that gift that keeps on giving, the forging of the "global warming" dogma.

I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.

Goldberg replies:

No, Ellen. Let's not just say that. Denying that the industrialized mass-murder of millions actually happened isn't really quite the same thing as refusing to believe global warming is real. I believe global warming is real, by the way. But people who "deny" — a bad word to begin with — that global warming is real are unpersuaded by media hype and the constantly moving goal posts of a funding-hungry scientific community.

He continues:

People who deny the Holocaust happened tend to be the kinds of people who are actually sympathetic with the perpetrators of the Holocaust. They tend to enjoy poking Jews in the eye with taunts and smirks. I know people who don't believe global warming is happening and let me just say they aren't the same people and to equate them with Holocaust deniers is a reprehensible attempt to dehumanize opponents in an argument.

First, we have, of course, the game of false moral equivalence in this casual slander, which we'll get to in a moment. But also in play here is Goodman's casual mis-use of the term "deny."

There are actually very few who deny that many parts of the globe do seem to be getting a bit warmer. (There's more ice in Antarctica, however. Go figure.) But how much of this is due to the earth's neverending cycles of warming and cooling and how much (a fraction at best) is being goosed by human activity is a legitimate topic. But by grouping all shades of disagreement with the current, leftist-led "global warming" party line, (i.e., Bush did it), into a falsely unified category of "deniers" is intellectually dishonest. Of course that's something that never bothers those glibly superior beings on the left.

But matters get even more profoundly disturbing. Glenn continues to play the ball by referencing a dead-on observation by Arnold Kling. What "disturbs" Kling about liberals (whom we in HazZzMat choose to more accurately label "leftists"):

...is that they are issuing rhetorical put-downs as a substitute for laying out an alternative and thinking through its consequences. Unfortunately, this is an all-to-typical modus operandi.

Now isn't this just one of the things we've been harping on in HazZzMat since we founded it over a year ago? The left never has an actual argument against a conservative or libertarian idea. They, and their media helpers, find it much more easy to demonize and belittle than to engage. This is the classic Stalinist tactic of "denunciation," American-style.

It's a cheap, sleazy weapon, but it's proved alarmingly successful over many, many years. It's also why the left has become so shallow. For generations, they've only had to denounce, not engage in argumentation, in order to win a debate. So they've become intellectually lazy, and now issue their casual slanders and denunciations more to gain cooing admiration from their fellow leftists than they do to win a political battle. For them, looking good has become far more important than doing good. In truth, they generally don't have a clue as to what they're talking about. (And this goes double for the Hollywood left.)

But there's yet another interesting element lying just beneath the surface of leftist cant and propaganda. Even mentioning it will drive a leftist into paroxysms of rage. But Kling talks about it anyway as an extension of his comments on Goodman, re: "global warming":

The Left's religion often comes dressed up as science. Marxism is one example. The eugenics movement of the early twentieth century is another. The Global Warming crusade is probably another.

Since Marxism is indeed a secular religion, it, like traditional religion, bases its faith on dogma. Marx and Lenin are the prophets and primary sources of revealed truth in this religion. But, since it is a secular religion, new dogmas and sacraments can be established whenever they prove convenient, since truth, being malleable, is redefined whenever it is convenient, moving the goal posts continually forward in an evolving dialectic. Coming full circle, Kling fully understands that "global warming" has thus moved from its earlier status as a debatable scientific theory into the realm of a revealed truth.

A practicing Catholic might agree with an atheistic scientist that one's belief that Christ rose from the dead is irrational. But for that Catholic, it's an article of faith, and he has chosen to believe it. Nothing will shake him from that belief. Not even the potential for scientific disproof.

Likewise, "global warming" has now been transformed into an equivalent, sacred truth by practicing leftists. The real goal of their party leaders is to transform a cyclical phenomenon into a "scientific" truth (as articulated by the Party) that can be used as a weapon to force capitalist America into a disadvantageous economic situation that could lead to its defeat. But most practicing leftists, Goodman included, see in reality only a surface phenomenon that can be exploited, allowing them to pose as all-good (liberals) who are fighting for all of humanity against the evil ones (Bush, the Republicans, and Exxon), to "save the planet."

This kind of stuff is really getting out of control. But every time a commentator, pundit, or scientist tries to pull real scientific theory back from the brink of sensationalism, he's denounced, slandered, demonized, and shunned. And can damn well get bumped off the tenure track if he's a junior academics.

Ultimately, it's small wonder that "everyone" agrees that humans in general and the U.S. in particular are 100% responsible for "global warming." But the real reason everyone agrees is that it's far, far too dangerous not to.

Glenn Reynolds, who, like Goldberg, actually agrees on some level that the globe is getting a bit warmer, has this interesting take, with which we'll wrap this up. For now.

...we should probably be acting as if global warming theories are true regardless -- but acting as if isn't the same as crushing all dissent. And I can't help but feel that for people like Goodman,getting to compare people you disagree with to holocaust deniers is the main point, and global warming is just the excuse. Don't want me to get that impression? Don't act that way, then.

As the thermometer tries to climb out of the single digits here in Washington, with the wind-chill factor dropping below zero, and as upstate New York continues to sink beneath, in some places, 6 feet of lake-effect snow, we chanced upon this warming grafik at RedState. Heaven knows where it came from, but it generated warm fuzzies here as we continue to suffer, along with our New York brothers and sisters, from the disastrous effects of "global warming."

Of course, this would never deter a world-class bloviator like America's rightful President, Al Gore, who, as usual, is on a global mission to run down the U.S. while promoting our opponents' right to do practically anything to screw us:

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Emerging economies such as China are justified in holding back on fighting greenhouse gas emissions until richer polluters like the United States do more to solve the problem, former Vice President Al Gore said Wednesday.

Whose side is this pompous pol on? Ours or the Chi-coms? Eight years after Americans barely saved themselves from this gasbag, Gore still resents their obvious wisdom in doing so.

Gore is typical of the shallow, snarky, entitlement-driven, wealthy socialists who've led the Democrats for decades. He regularly comports himself in public like an adolescent high school jock who just lost out being crowned Homecoming King by a couple of votes. His snarling "angry voice" sounds hilariously like Vince McMahon shilling for one of his upcoming Worldwide Wrestlingsmackdowns on TV. (BTW, unlike Gore, McMahon pays his investors a swell dividend.)

Eight years after 2000, the resentful Gore is still pissing on his fellow citizens. The vitriol of his extended temper tantrum is exceeded only by the revolting exploits of Jimmy Carter. Gore's relentless "global warming" campaign is the latest episode in an unscripted reality show wherein he imagines he's really President and hopes you will, too. Similarly, Carter's recent anti-semitism and international provocations are meant to undermine Bush who, however lamely, is gamely trying to get America through this century mostly intact and without our women being forced to adopt jihadist chic. Apparently, hell hath no fury like a Democrat scorned.

But back to the "global warming" that inspired today's most excellent HazZzMat rant. One cartoonist comments in colored ink on our suddenly never-ending cold-snap this week, and provides some interesting verbiage to underscore his interesting point:

You don’t hear much about the ozone hole any more. Has it gone away? Nope. NOAA and NASA say in 2006 it was bigger and deeper than ever.

But wait, you say, we implemented the Montreal Protocols in 1989, eliminating ozone depleting CFCs. Kofi Annan called the Protocol, “Perhaps the most successful international agreement to date.” CFC concentrations have been falling since 1995. How can the ozone hole be worse?

It’s not worse, says NOAA, it’s better. It’s just that you can’t see how great the Protocol is working because colder than average temperatures in the Antarctic mask the benefit. Cold weather “result[s] in larger and deeper ozone holes, while warmer weather leads to smaller ones.”

Yeah, right. Just something else to be scared transparent of. The left may be always right. But they are never, ever happy unless they are playing chicken little and hogging the limelight as well. Makes you wonder, when it comes to "global warming," whether we're dealing with "consensus" or "coercion."

Until recently, Ethiopians arguably received more from the Judeo-Christian legacy than they gave. With the recent defeat by Ethiopian forces of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in Somalia, however, part of this debt has been repaid. Some of the defeated forces had links to al-Qaeda: indeed, the ICU was sheltering three al-Qaeda leaders (Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Saleh Ali Salih Nabhan, and Abu Taha al-Sudani) responsible for 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2002 attacks on Israeli targets in Kenya...'As It Turns Out, Pre-Emption Works,' J. Peter Pham, Michael Krauss, TCS Daily, 2/8/2007

This article by Pham and Krauss is one where you should read the whole piece. So little of value has been reported about Ethiopians overturning of the Islamist insurrection in Somalia by the Western media that much of what they discuss may come as a surprise. This action was a swift, well-executed, more than adequately manned action to overturn an international who's who of terrorists who had stolen a country to make into a base for terrorism worldwide. The authors should hammer their main points to the main entrance to the State Department, as well as to that of the committee rooms involved with military and foreign affairs in Congress. To wit...

'1. Decisive, unilateral action works....' '2. There is no substitute for 'boots on the ground...' '3. When you fight, don't tie one hand behind your back...' '4. An enemy cannot be destroyed until its avenues of escape are sealed...' '5. Strike while the iron is hot....' ('As It Turns Out, Pre-Emption Works...continued)

Until Democrats began making other claims, such as there's no more successful route to peace with bandits, dictators, and terrorists than sitting down to tea with them at a negotiating table, those five points could fairly be described as universal military and diplomatic doctrine when dealing with an intractable enemy. Kudos to Tech Central Stationfor presenting this piece and to the authors for researching and writing it. Before Chris Matthews and Dan Rather came along this used to be called reporting.

This scandal of a love triangle, an epic journey, and attempted murder by an astronaut should not be regarded as a problem for NASA. For fifty years, astronauts have been portrayed as little more than human-like machines who all have the same smile, regardless of race, sex, or gender, all wear the same uniform, and are all so clean that they could play cards in the Clean Room at JPL and not disturb the manufacture of satellites. The Right Stuff counteracted that a bit, but the movie was about the original manned program's earliest days, long faded from popular memory. A few years ago, a producer on the Science Fiction channel tried to run a soap opera about NASA's shuttle crews. It vanished without a trace. This is not surprising. Who would have believed it? But now, as Formerspook suggests, NASA has received a great gift. Astronauts are just like Dr. Phil's guests. They're in the NY Post, front page scandal sheet stuff. This won't hurt at funding time. If the people know that real folks are going to the moon and on to Mars, they'll be a lot more willing to cheer more appropriations than they would be for perpetually smiling, squeaky clean robots.

Congress now and then does something really dopey. But for sheer and utter stupidity it is difficult to top their wanting to pass, during a time of war, a resolution admonishing the commander-in-chief for a tactical military move...Members of Congress may be required to take an oath that they will support and defend the Constitution...but, as such folly as we have been witnessing reminds us, they are not also required actually to know what it says...It’s the president, not Congress, the Constitution charges with deciding and implementing the conduct of our country’s wars. It says Congress gets to decide if (Article I, section 8), but the president decides how (Article II, section 2)....'Showbiz Instead of Statesmanship', Fred J. Eckert, National Review Online, 2/8/2007

Back in the 60s a rallying cry at radical demonstrations was "the whole world is watching." As subsequent events demonstrated, it was the television audience that was watching. When the audience saw that the extent of the demonstration didn't go beyond Michigan Avenue, they elected Richard Nixon. Show business is all that losers in politics have to offer. This bears more than a passing resemblance to the displays that weaker male apes put on when a stronger male takes over a group. They howl, stick out their tongues, bend over, beat their chests. The usual effect is that this year's chieftan ignores them. To take the lead position, it is necessary to do something. And, as Eckert hammers home in this fine piece in National Review Online, Democrats in their new roles as members of a Congressional majority are only acting. The White House, thankfully, seems to know this.

'So let's review. No crime was committed, according to Fitzgerald, in the publication of Valerie Plame Wilson's name...No crime was committed, according to Fitzgerald, by the actions of two government officials who revealed Valerie Plame Wilson's name to Novak...No crime was committed, according to Fitzgerald, by the White House press secretary who actually and actively tried to spoon-feed the name to three journalists...Scooter Libby, by contrast, spoke to a reporter who didn't publish a story with Valerie Plame Wilson's name in it. She went to jail for 85 days. Now Fitzgerald wants to send Libby to jail too - on the basis of dimly remembered conversations and indecipherable chicken scratches...."

This is Stalinism at its finest: the total fabrication of "truth" in the name of some "higher" value, i.e., the future career path of "Ambassador" Wilson, the drive by Democrats to trash the Bush Administration regardless of the consequences on national and international policy, and the usual unnamed sources for whom Washington is the best camouflage for thuggery.

Read Coulter's summary and Podhoretz's. By now so far removed from what's reported by Chris Matthews and his "repertorial" cohort, the truth about Libby, Plame, or anything else involving the Bush Administration seems more like a fantasy. This is intended. The left lost its case decades ago. Its response is to create a world out of whole cloth. The consequences in political discourse are uncomplicated; they are to destroy it for most Americans. This too is intended. It would be useful for Americans to pay attention.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

For some reason—who knows what it is—Jimmy Carter, who's been getting wonderful press since Ronald Reagan trounced him in 1980, waited until the reign of Bush II before showing his true, ugly colors. In addition to traveling the world promoting communist revolution and trashing the United States, his recent activities have included the publication of his recent miserable excuse for a book, which extols the Palestinian thugs while trashing the Israelis for trying to survive nearly 6 decades of murderous terrorism.

But Jimmuh regards the Israelis as the terrorists, as has been discussed in many an article and blog, although the MSM still largely gives him a pass because he trashes Bush, too. Fortunately, an increasing number of Jews are not giving this pompous ass a pass, as evidenced by at least one institution that promoted a petition drive opposing the contents of Carter's slanderous tome.

Carter, like the predictable, totalitarian leftist Democrat he's now revealed himself to be, lashes out as one might expect:

WASHINGTON — Jimmy Carter has accused an international Jewish human rights group of "falsehood and slander" for launching a petition that resulted in thousands of signatures being sent to the former president in protest of his controversial book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"I don't believe Simon Wiesenthal would have resorted to falsehood and slander to raise funds," Carter wrote last month in a handwritten letter to the head of the human rights center that bears the name of the late Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter. The petition does not require payment to be sent, though Carter's letter suggests it is being used as a fundraising tool.

Excuse us? Who's dishing out the "falsehoods and slander?" Carter is employing that favorite tactic of the left, slandering his opponents and making them the focus of the argument rather than responding to their objections. Note how clowns like Carter always manage to skate past the issue at hand. Clearly, for this supreme idiotarian, the only reason he's having a problem is that Jews are being deliberately stupid, small-minded, and aggressive.

Which sort of makes their point, don't you think? It's time for Carter to start looking into a suite at Sunrise Assisted Living.

in Missouri, where Rep. Jane Cunningham introduced a bill that will surely unnerve many of her state's higher education bureaucrats...Ms. Cunningham's bill is aimed straight at the ideological orthodoxy that holds sway on American college campuses. It would require that Missouri's state-funded colleges and universities announce each year what they have done institutionally "to ensure and promote intellectual diversity and academic freedom." A bill similar to Ms. Cunningham's has also been introduced in Virginia....'The Revolt Against Academia', Andrew Ferguson, The NY Sun, 2/7/2007

I feel David Horowitz's footsteps in this story. Congratulations to Front Page Magazine's publisher on spreading the word and enacting the laws!

If putting one’s foot in one’s mouth were a lucrative enterprise, George Soros would be worth far more than his current $8.5 billion. While bashing the Iraq war for the benefit of reporters at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Hungarian-born Soros, a Holocaust survivor, unburdened himself of the view that the Nazis were once more in charge...'The Madness of King George,' Jacob Laksin, Front Page Magazine, 2/7/2007

That's the trouble with cartoon characters like George Soros. No matter how hard they're run over by a steamroller they puff up again and start causing trouble. In the movies, this is done by the cartoonist. In the 'real' life of George Soros, this is done by spending more of his billions on spreading lies. A favorite target of his beneficence may be Senator Clinton. Pay attention, Democrats, if you are still able to outside of Connecticut. Republicans should already know. Read the rest of this article on Front Page, the Web's finest outer of Reds.

The non-binding measure before us, by contrast, is an accumulation of ambiguities and inconsistencies: at once for the war but also against the war; pledging support to the troops in the field but also washing its hands of what they are doing....'A Battle of Wills,' NY Post, 2/7/2007, adapted from Sen. Lieberman's remarks to the Senate.

Strong words by a Democrat, but then Senator Lieberman is no ordinary Democrat. Kudos to Senator Joe for pounding home his points. Read his whole remarks at the NY Post.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

PoliPundit points out further observations in Opinion Journal (link cited in excerpt below):

In its 2001 report, the U.N.’s best high-end estimate of the rise in sea levels by 2100 was three feet. Lord Monckton notes that the upcoming report’s high-end best estimate is 17 inches, or half the previous prediction. Similarly, the new report shows that the 2001 assessment had overestimated the human influence on climate change since the Industrial Revolution by at least one-third.

Such reversals (and there are more) are remarkable, given that the IPCC’s previous reports, in 1990, 1995 and 2001, have been steadily more urgent in their scientific claims and political tone. It’s worth noting that many of the policymakers who tinker with the IPCC reports work for governments that have promoted climate fears as a way of justifying carbon-restriction policies. More skeptical scientists are routinely vetoed from contributing to the panel’s work. The Pasteur Institute’s Paul Reiter, a malaria expert who thinks global warming would have little impact on the spread of that disease, is one example.

U.N. scientists have relied heavily on computer models to predict future climate change, and these crystal balls are notoriously inaccurate. According to the models, for instance, global temperatures were supposed to have risen in recent years. Yet according to the U.S. National Climate Data Center, the world in 2006 was only 0.03 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in 2001–in the range of measurement error and thus not statistically significant.

Well, yeah.

But tell that to the "global warning" fanatics. Actually, maybe you'd better not, particularly if you're an academic, as Ball explains here:

No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal attacks and make career progress easier. What I have experienced in my personal life during the last years makes me understand why most people choose not to speak out; job security and fear of reprisals. Even in University, where free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent.

The Gramsci Effect(TM) again. Undermine the culture—or in this case, the scientific method itself—by silencing those who challenge the Party Line, with the ultimate goal of altering the prevailing cultural model from capitalism to Marxism. Looks like the disease once strictly limited to the Humanities and "Social Sciences" departments has now infected the last bastions of objectivity in the university community, our science departments, with disastrous consequences for the pursuit of knowledge and objective truth. (And of course, the MSM is always there to help with the propagandizing and demonizing.)

Actually, there are good reasons for reducing our dependence on foreign oil and getting back to nukes and other innovative sources of energy. All of which have nothing to do with the "global warming" mythos. But that's never what this has been about, as PoliPundit would agree:

It’s all about anti-capitalism. This issue has nothing to do with the climate.

What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on? Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification....'Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts?', Global Warming Is not due to human contribution of CO2, Timothy Ball, Canadian Free Press, 2/6/2007

Of the many crimes of the Bolshevik regime, one was attempting to force scientific results to match ideological expectations. Arthur Koestler in several books, including Darkness at Noon and especially The Case of the Midwife Toad, exploded this false science. Timothy Ball seems to be trying for that mantle.

Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London, Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles. Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact. By the 1990's temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I'll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling....('Global Warming'....continued)

A leading climatologist, Ball joins the head of the U.S. Metereorological Bureau in decrying the "consensus" on global warming. Do these scientists merit attention in the face of a "consensus"? Global warmingists don't think so:

As Lindzen said many years ago: "the consensus was reached before the research had even begun." Now, any scientist who dares to question the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they are simply being good scientists. This has reached frightening levels with these scientists now being called climate change denier with all the holocaust connotations of that word. The normal scientific method is effectively being thwarted...('Global Warming'...continued)

Consensus in the sciences is generally highly conservative. There was a consensus regarding Newtonian physics in 1905. One researcher, building from generations of suggestive work by others, overturned that consensus. His generation of physicists in the next two decades created the new consensus in physics, relativity and quantum mechanics. But consensus in global warming is not conservative; it is instead a mask over a blatantly political agenda, which Dr. Ball is clearly aware of.

I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as libellous, from an academic colleague, saying I had no right to say what I was saying, especially in public lectures. Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a particular viewpoint...In another instance, I was accused by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki of being paid by oil companies. That is a lie. Apparently he thinks if the fossil fuel companies pay you have an agenda. So if Greenpeace, Sierra Club or governments pay there is no agenda and only truth and enlightenment?...('Global Warming'....continued)

"No right to say what he was saying?" In what science would such a credo apply?

You guessed it: political science.

Read the whole piece. Then put on another sweater because, as Dr. Ball says, and so do others, "the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling...."

Monday, February 05, 2007

Citizenship in the old American South conveyed liberty on white Southerners but not on those taken from Africa and enslaved on the cotton plantations. Germany, the Netherlands, and many other Western European countries honor the rights and liberties of their citizens but minimize those of foreigners who are enslaved in their sex industries or forced labor...What Freedom House has constructed is an index that measures the freedom of the free. If you are a slave, you do not count in the Freedom House index. More importantly, the efforts of those attempting to save you in your adopted country are not weighed in Freedom House’s ratings. This approach may reflect the thinking of Aristotle but not of Frederick Douglass....,Does 'Freedom' Mean Freedom from Slavery?, John R. Miller, National Review Online, 2/5/2007

What is it about the incapacity of major organizations like Freedom House to see slavery? John R. Miller illuminates this question well in today's NRO. One might ask a further question: what is it about the left that blinds them to the fact that many of their closest and oldest friends are hypocrites? National Review Online should be congratulated for pursuing this. It would be nice if the State Department or the Democrat Party tried the same thing.

The national climate has radically changed, so much so that the arguments of Mexifornia—close the borders, return to the melting pot, offer earned citizenship to most aliens of long residence in exchange for acceptance of English and American culture—seem tame today, if not passé....,'Mexifornia, 5 Years Later,' Victor Davis Hanson, City Journal

This long, thoughtful article reflecting on his own book of 2002 is important to read for several reasons. One, it illuminates just what he says it will. But two, it exposes under harsh light the growing divide between U.S. elites and the rest of U.S. citizens regarding illegal immigrations. It is as if, Hanson shows, we no longer live in a representative republic but are instead the citizens of a tyranny.

The question of course is rhetorical. Despite his subsequent mythification as the Che Guevara of the Democrat Party, Robert F. Kennedy was as calculating as Richard Nixon. That's why he was so intensely disliked by Gene McCarthy supporters. Originally a staff attorney on the House Un-American Activities Committee, where his mentor was Joseph McCarthy, a stout supporter of his brother's plans to intervene in Vietnam, Bobby's turn against the war struck many as pathologically opportunistic. Everyone knew that Richard Nixon was an opportunist of course. But both of them were. For a while, Bobby stood out because he was the late president's brother, but, observed apart from that, he was shrill, manipulative, and humorless, traits which should sound very familiar.

In her path to the Democrat nomination for the Presidency, Senator Clinton shows many of the same signs, as this article by Joseph Klein suggests. It's a strong argument, soundly based, but, as with both Richard Nixon and Bobby Kennedy, it may not matter much. Clinton's real power -- this is more than noticeable in New York's recent Senate campaign -- is not based on charm, rhetorical skill, or charisma. Like Robert Kennedy's and Richard Nixon's, it lies primarily in the calculated manipulation of fear. Opponents among Democrats and Republicans had better pay attention.

Friday, February 02, 2007

Disagree with someone on the left and the likely response will be one of the following:

You'll be accused of racism.

You'll be accused of censorship.

Both, of course, are classic logical fallacies, the first a transparent ad hominem attack, the second a more subtle but tasty red herring.

Such fallacies, often accompanied by associated, vicious slanders provide leftists with convenient and useful diversions from the unwinnable argument at hand. All such verbal slights of hand conveniently serve to distract attention from the leftist's indefensible claims. The leftist, after all, being a dialectician rather than a logician, cannot in actuality defend the party line, which is based on dogma rather than logic. So he simply diverts the argument via false, temperature-raising attacks on his opponent.

Each of the above responses conveniently wraps Marley's Chain around the leftist's opponent. This creates a powerful diversion by focusing on the alleged character flaws of the questioner. (Note how often, and how successfully, lefties pull this on the cable talk shows.) In short order, the initial challenge doesn't have to be answered while the opponent is caught in an endless loop of defense. Game, set, and match.

The best response to Red Herring #1, of course, is not defensive denial, but an immediate challenge demanding proof for the accusation.

In discussing the ongoing scandal of Washington Post "military blogger" (and hard leftist) William Arkin's odious attack on our troops, Power Line's John Hinderaker has one of the most efficient responses we've yet seen to Red Herring #2 above, which was employed by Arkin in an alleged apology for his rant. We share it with you here to provide you with some efficient small arms fire the next time you run into one of these scoundrels at a cocktail party:

One more time, Bill: pointing out that things you write are wrong and employ bad arguments isn't the same as trying to "censor" you.

If you're looking for pseudoscience and the politics of hysteria, you don't have to go far if you live in California. Just head toward the state capitol. Aping their friends in France, the country California would most like to be apparently, state Senators are pushing what is a green hysteric's movement in Europe, the demonization of cloned and genetically altered products. But, as Dr. Miller points out...

Scientists have known for years that the clones are indistinguishable genetically, biochemically and nutritionally from the parent. As one farmer who owns a pair of clones of a prize-winning Holstein cow observed, they are essentially twins of 'a cow that was already in production.'...(Clone:...continued)

Forty years ago, Dr. Norman Borlaug introduced dramatic changes in the way grains are produced. If the same green hysteria had confronted his techniques, tens of millions of people would starve to death every year. Evidently, with green hysterics, it's not good results that matter, but an imagined natural purity. Dr. Miller suggests a sober examination of what we have eaten for a very long time. No domestic animal, for instance, is remotely similar to the creatures crossbred thousands of years ago to produce domestic sheep and cows. No grains currently in wide production existed in their current form a century ago. Crossbreeding, cross-pollination, and grafting, primitive forms of genetic manipulation, have been at play in human agriculture since it started before the first Egyptian dynasty.

Maybe green is really green, and stands for envy. Nothing seems to offend the greens more than success.